James Brown parked his black Toyota Avensis in the courtyard outside his cottage, switched off the lights, took out the keys and, as the internal beam dimmed to darkness, he sat listening to the engine cool down.

Normally he loved coming home after work, especially in springtime. Home to the serenity of the countryside, renewing his sense of wellbeing, with the sounds from the trees and glimpses of the meadows stretching untouched behind his small garden. It instilled in him a freedom he rarely felt elsewhere. Not now though. This evening he was sad and angry. Sad for Susan and angry at the rebuff he had suffered from the man on the phone. He’d contacted him to see what, if anything, he knew about Susan’s death. But as he’d begun to speak, the man had hung up on him. Maybe he’d been the wrong person to call, after all.

He gripped the steering wheel with tight fists and banged his head against his hands. Susan was gone. He had to keep reminding himself. She’d rescued him from his demons all those years ago and now he had failed her.

He didn’t want to leave the security of his car. He felt safe in it and he thought of the many times he and Susan had cradled each other as children, she whispering in his ear to be strong, to stand tall and proud, and he whimpering like a lost kitten in her arms. He thought of how Susan, as a child, had shown him how to make his bed to the standards dictated, how to fold his clothes and pick fluff from the floor so that it was pristine. He was convinced that she had subsequently developed a thing about clean bedrooms. Who could blame her? He thought of all they had witnessed and never spoken about, and he cried silent tears for her, for her memory and for her goodness to him. Now, he had to stand on his own two feet and be strong. For Susan if nothing else.

At last, he willed himself out of the vehicle as the temperature dissolved to ice. Lifting his briefcase from the back seat he stepped on to the snow-blanketed courtyard and locked the car with a click. The old moon was getting ready for its new phase and its light appeared dimmer than he thought it should be.

A shadow fell before him and he squinted upwards expecting to see a cloud sheathing the moon. But there was no cloud in the frosty starlit sky. A figure stood tall in front of him, a ski mask covering the face, two dark eyes visible.

Jumping back against his car, James dropped his briefcase, then remembered his phone was inside it. Too late now.

‘What . . . what . . . do you want?’ His tongue tightened over his words, fear dripping down his face in droplets, along his nose, dribbling like snot. What could he do? He couldn’t think clearly.

‘You could not stop interfering,’ the man was saying, his voice a low, menacing drone.

James swung his head from side to side wondering why he hadn’t noticed the car when he’d pulled up. He now glimpsed a metallic glint behind the oak tree to his right. Who was this man? How had he known he could shield his car over there?

‘What? Why?’ James whispered, scuffing his feet on the icy snow and staring up at the huge figure looming in front of him. The flashlight in the gloved hand blinded him.

‘You and your friend made nuisances of yourselves. Not for the first time.’

‘My friend?’ James asked, but he knew the man meant Susan.

The man laughed, grabbed him by the elbow and propelled him along the path. James felt a suffocating ball gathering mucus in his throat and his breathing quickened as the sky clouded and snow began to fall in round thick lumps.

‘What do you want?’ James’ fear quickly turned to terror, his brain constricting like a snail into its shell. He had to think fast. He needed to get control of the situation. He could call out for help, if only his voice wasn’t lost somewhere deep in his chest. And he knew no one would hear him. There wasn’t another house within two miles of his cottage.

Maybe he should make a run for it? No. His attacker was taller, broader and looked so much stronger, making James feel like an insect trapped in the jaws of a fly.

Panic swelled and strapped itself squarely inside his chest, halting him after a couple of steps. He couldn’t continue. He felt like he was walking with only one shoe on. The man stopped too, pulling a length of rope from his pocket. That did it.

James leapt forward, surprising the man, who lost the grip on his elbow and fell, the flashlight lodging in a clump of snow. Skidding toward the front door, James searched with one hand in his pocket for the key. Ice crunched behind him. He had the key in the door when an arm slithered around his neck, gripped tight, and he was pulled back against a solid chest.

James fought, managing to loosen the hold on his neck, but an elbow crashed into the back of his skull. His head exploded with pain.

‘You should not have done that!’

He thought he knew the voice, struggled to recognise it, but failed. He turned quickly and tried to run but felt the rope slipping around his neck, harsh nylon scraping his skin. This might be his last chance.

He drew back his arm and connected with the man’s midriff but it bounced back. Pain shot through his elbow, up into his shoulder. The rope slackened and he collapsed to the ground. He turned over and scrambled to his knees. Run, he had to run. But he couldn’t get his feet under him. He shouted then. As loud as he could, from his terrified throat.

‘Help me. Help!’ His voice sounded like someone else’s echoing off the trees.

The rope tugged tighter. He tried to dig his hands into the frozen earth. He tried to halt the pull. He tried to shout once more, but the rope was taut, biting into his skin, dangerously close to cutting off his air. What could he do? Talk, he thought. I have to get him talking. He ceased his resistance but the man tightened the rope.

‘Come,’ the man said.

He steered James away from the cottage toward the oak tree with its branches casting demonic shapes on the whitewashed walls of the cottage. Beneath it, two wrought iron chairs, placed there for summer shade, looked out of place covered with mounds of snow.

‘What are you doing?’ James said, when the rope eased slightly.

The man threw one end of it into the air, looping it around a branch midway up the crusted bark. James prayed for a cloud to blot out the moon, to darken the garden into total blackness. With his eyes accustomed to the dusky light, he could see too much now and his brain filled with irrational thoughts and flashing, unframed pictures. One was an image of his mother, whom he never remembered having seen in his life. I’m going to die, he thought. He’s going to kill me and I can do nothing. His whole body convulsed in an unending trembling. He needed Susan. She always knew what to do. The man pivoted round and James looked into the masked face, stared at the eyes waltzing a wicked dance to a silent tune and he recognised them. Eyes he could never forget; eyes he would always remember.

‘It was you . . . Susan . . . you . . .’ he said. ‘I know you. I remember . . .’

James struggled weakly, attempting to pull away, but each movement collided with a further twist of the nylon. Now he was remembering. Too late? He tried to form words to delay the man.

‘The . . . night of the candles . . . the belt . . .’

‘You think you are clever. You were not always the smart one, were you? Back then, you had a girl to stand up for you. Not any more.’ The voice was so clear it could cut the ice into shards. The eyes ceased gyrating.

James frantically tore at the rope, pulling and jerking, scrunching his fingers under it, his stomach heaving with the strain. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to wrench free. He kicked out with his legs, showering snow into the air. He had to survive. He had to get help. He had the rest of his life to live. In a desperate attempt to wrong-foot his opponent, he allowed his body to flop into a dead weight. How could the man heave him upwards then?

‘Stand on the chair,’ the man commanded, swiping away a mound of snow with one sweep of his hand.

James stood still as if hypnotised, the rope furrowing a ridge into his neck, the man’s body heat overpowering his senses. He tasted saltiness at the back of his throat. Two arms encircled his body and lifted him on to one of the garden chairs. The furniture legs sank into the snow, wobbled, then settled. Before James could jump back down, the man hauled the rope further round the branch.

The snow fell faster and thicker. James swayed as the man stood on the other chair and knotted the rope.

‘It would be a fitting destiny for you to swing from the apple tree, James, but its branches are not strong enough. This oak will do the job instead.’

The rope was secure around the thick limb, midway up the bark. The falling snow darkened the moon but its thin light still cast a yellow ray over the courtyard. The laden branches trembled with the additional weight and James pleaded, moving his lips without sound.

Before he could action further thoughts from his brain to his body, the man kicked over the chair and it settled into the snow-covered earth.

As his chest ceased to inflate, his tongue protruded from purple lips, blood leaked dots on to the whites of his eyes and James saw the moon dance along the sky through a million white lights. He thought he could smell fresh apples as his body swayed in the windless air and his bowels opened. He heard the crunch of receding footsteps, before the white lights turned red, then black.

A thick blizzard of snow tumbled earthwards. A sharp snowstorm of biblical proportions. The body paled. Merging into its white surroundings, it cooled in death.